In a free economy with gold as the one sound money, the global consensus are the 79 protons of the gold atom. There are different shapes and forms of collections of atoms, but fundamentally, as long as there are 79 protons, it is the base money.

The raw resource of gold is mixed with lots of dirt, stone and other lesser metals, and extracting gold ore is an entrepreneurial task. Human ingenuity and labor has to be intermingled with these natural resources so to increase the production stage of this good.

Raw ore can further be refined into gold dust and nuggets with high purity. Users no longer have to discount the "worthless" dirt mixed into the "valuable" atoms with 79 protons, making scales usable to measuring the quantity of base money.

Free individuals might again increase the production stage of this good by casting the gold into bars or coins, so to increase the usability as a unit of account in economic calculation. Again, the important attribute is not the shape, but quantity of the base money: gold atoms.

All these different shapes of gold atoms are simply "user interfaces" that increase the usability of the base money. Each individual will choose a specific form of gold in the task that he needs solved. All these products are created voluntarily and w/o government intervention.

In Bitcoin, the base layer money is defined in consensus as units of Satoshis in the set of UTXOs on the blockchain. Unlike gold however, the base layer Satoshis are in a sense always pure, as soon as they are generated in the coinbase transaction.

Access to this base money is possible with a valid signature, and there are several user interfaces to generate and manage the corresponding private keys. E.g. rather primitively with 256 coin flips and pen & paper calculation of the corresponding address and signature.

Skilled and dedicated entrepreneurs have produced software that increases the ease of use in key management and they focus on unique edge cases to solve individual user problems. The ultimate choice of which software to run is by the end user.

There are further hardware wallet solutions, that solve the problem of secure private key generation and signing. Here again are individual preferences, like support of several currencies [@Trezor & @LedgerHQ], or balls out amazingess with @COLDCARDwallet.

To utilize this programmable magic internet money to its fullest extend, wallets can specialize in delegating control of base money to several independent private keys. Cutting edge multi-signature wallets like @Misthosio and @Coinkite are incredibly useful tools.

Just like gold is defined as 79 protons in an atom, bitcoin is defined as units of satoshis on the blockchain. This is the shelling point of what the base money actually is, but how it can be used differs greatly upon the individual problems that users need solved.

Just like entrepreneurs manipulate the base money gold by purifying and shaping it, software and hardware developers increase the usability of bitcoin by improving and specializing on how to control the UTXOs on the blockchain.

Bitcoin is Anarchy, there are no aggressive interventions dictating how to access these UTXOs, individual entrepreneurs can innovate without permission, producing the best solution for any user. There is no "official" bitcoin wallet, as there is no authority that could make it so

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1/ Below is a Q3 2018 update on the global monetary base, or base money. This is certainly not the M1 money supply. Not M2. Not M3. The distinction is important. What is base money? Is it #gold? Is it government fiat? #Bitcoin?? Have some charts to share. This is installment #2…

3/ Traditionally, commodity money has been asset-based, most notably gold. Gold is a true asset of the holder. If you own gold free and clear, it is your asset, and no one else's debt, no one else's liability.

Ok, this is going to be a controversial one. I've avoided the topic for a long time, but since there are many important experts -- ppl that I truly admire -- discussing the subject, I can no longer ignore it.

1/ Since the @Bakkt announcement, the issue has gained steam, especially through the works of @CaitlinLong_ (who's a real champion of #Bitcoin and liberty btw) and her concerns on WallSt's financialization of crypto. B/c of that, FRB is now inserted frequently into debates.

2/ As a background for laymen, FRB is considered THE BIG CONTENTIOUS & UNRESOLVED DEBATE within adherents of the so-called Austrian School of Economics. Rothbardians tend to think it's fraudulent, inflationary and causes economic cycles. They are the proponents of 100% reserves.

Gold: Its likely to be quiet today, with the US markets closed for the Labor Day public holiday. But the CFTC released its Commitment of Traders Report on Friday, as usual. To summarise, speculators were still (just) net short #gold as of 28 August. 1/6

Gold: The Managed Money category also remains net short #gold, although as in the case of the legacy report net speculative position, the net Managed Money short decreased slightly last week. 2/6

Gold: There was not much change to the Managed Money gross long #gold positions, which were steady around 11.4 million ounces. 3/6

If I understand correctly, the meaning of the word sound as "secure, reliable, solid, free from flaw or defect" may have its origins in the expression "sound money".

1/ To prove a gold or silver coin authenticity, a commonly used test in the past was throwing it against a hard surface to verify the distinctive melodious ring it produced. "Sound money carried the 'ring of truth,' while debased coinage landed with a dull, disappointing thud."

2/ In the XIX cent,"Americans with no formal education in reading, writing and arithmetic relied on the sight, sound, and feel of the only money they knew. Learning the different musical ringing sounds of those coins could easily qualify even a prairie settler as an econ expert."